After granting the user "Users (MY_COMPUTER_NAME\Users)" full control rights to this folder (virtual under IIS), the website started running again. But this time my PDF creator DLLs have are still not working (just keep returning null) and it seems to still be this security issue.

Am I missing any other security settings? I have given the folder full control to the following users:

IUSR

SYSTEM

LOCAL SERVICE

NETWORK SERVICE

MyName(Belrije\MyName)

Administrators (Belrije\Administrators)

Users (Belrije\Users)

IIS_IUSRS (Belrije\IIS_USRS)

P/S:Belrije is the computer name

NOTE: I have this same setup running on my laptop with no issues whatsoever.

You need to learn about ASP.NET debugging, from blog posts or books such as blogs.msdn.com/b/tom. To know the root cause is the very first step, and then you can start granting permissions in a meaningful way. Your changes (full control to so many accounts) cannot be considered as a good approach. Besides, the errors are really application/site specific, and caused by the modules/code issues. BTW, "NOTE: I have this same setup running on my laptop with no issues whatsoever." is a weak fact. We see so many "it works fine on my machine" here and there.
–
Lex LiDec 27 '11 at 5:25

I'd be interested to see a standardized approach to sorting out permission issues. I run into this situation frequently, like now, and it's not always clear because, like now, there's nothing in the event log. I just get a HTTP 500.0 error with a path to faulting request and a entire list of "Possible Solutions", but it doesn't happen in development. I'm no going to switch to Tracing to try and work this out, but honestly, should I be loosing hours of development time because of permission issues?
–
JacquesJul 7 at 15:26